11.30pm Yashasvi Jaiswal, Riyan Parag, Nitish Rana and Vaibhav Suryavanshi all tore into RCB’s bowling early in this 206 chase. Rajasthan Royals looked in control. Then Krunal Pandya and Suyash Sharma applied the brakes, with Krunal picking two wickets as well. Josh Hazlewood then bowled an excellent 17th over. RCB in control? Not quite. Dubey and Jurel took 22 off Bhuvneshwar’s 18th over to leave RR needing 18 off two overs. But then Hazlewood bowled an over to remember, giving away just one run and taking two wickets to seal victory for RCB. Royals have lost five on the trot, but the story today will be RCB finally giving a jubilant home crowd a win to savour. Batting first, of course, RCB put in a much improved display. Kohli, Salt and Padikkal helped set it up for the middle and lower order, and Tim David and Jitesh Sharma provided the finish to take RCB to their highest score at home this year.
Virat Kohli: “Look, we’ve had three pretty average games at home and we discussed a few things we need to get right as a batting unit and we applied ourselves well to get the total on board. The pitch wasn’t as flat as the score makes it look. Dew made the ball come on nicely in the second half and credit to Rajasthan for coming out and playing some good shots. The first challenge is winning the toss [chuckles]. In the second half there is always dew. We’ve struggled to put on a par score. The template is now pretty simple, for one guy to bat through and the others to attack around him. Devdutt and I know this ground well. Just wanted to let Salt to his thing at the top. There is pace and bounce in the first few overs with the new ball. Today we just tried to time the ball and keep enough pressure on the opposition to keep giving us boundary balls. [Our score] looks enough right now but at one point…”
Riyan Parag: “I think we did really well with the ball. I thought it was a 210-220 wicket. We held them back really well. With the batting, I thought at the halfway mark we were in the driving seat. But we have ourselves to blame. We didn’t show enough intent against the spinners and didn’t execute well. The onus is on the players to show that freedom and put in performances with intent. It’s a tournament where you make one mistake and you pay for it and that’s what happened today. We speak a lot as groups, we try and be honest in our conversations. We have spoken about situations like this and we just couldn’t execute it tonight. We were in the driving seat and we let it slip. We gotta play for pride now.”
Jai: “One captain RP win over another captain RP”
Amey: “The curse of Chinnaswamy ground for RCB is finally broken.”
Yash Dayal to Fazalhaq Farooqi, 1 run, Clubbed down the ground and just short of long-off. RCB have pulled off a comeback win for the ages! Josh Hazlewood the hero and Kohli knows it as he lifts the Australian off his feet. RR fall short in another chase they were in control of! What scenes at the Chinnaswamy!